STE Highlights 2019
Science, Technology & Engineering Highlights feature awards and noteworthy scientific achievements at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
! Click on an issue date to see the Science Highlight headlines and link to the articles.
June 2019
- Even, Zhu, Yang, and Batista win Postdoc Distinguished Mentor Awards
- Cincio, El-Atwani, and Maurya win Lab’s Distinguished Postdoctoral Performance Awards
- Team completes 45th Advanced Homemade Explosives Course, achieves Program of Record
- Neutral uranium(VI) sulfido compound isolated and characterized for the first time
- Claire Sanders and Scott Cram lecture at the 41st Annual Course in Cytometry
- Ricardo Lebensohn teaches Texas A&M’s Summer School on Computational Materials Science
- Predicting earthquakes with machine learning
- Fusion-relevant simulations show new helium bubble growth mode in tungsten
- Neutron lifetime measured with unprecedented precision
- Los Alamos joins CERN’s LHCb team as full member
- Neutron diffraction reveals texture changes in low-enriched metallic uranium nuclear fuel
- A new approach to analyze cell signaling models demonstrated
July 2019
- Mandie Gehring recognized as a distinguished young alumna by alma mater
- Spendelow recognized for leadership by DOE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program
- Mary Anne With receives NPA’s 2019 Distinguished Service Award
- Postdocs present their research in 3 minutes or less
- Fensin receives TMS American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers Hardy Award
- Lockhart and Gerez Awarded Barry Goldwater Scholarships
- Matthews recognized with DOE Fuel Cycle R&D Excellence award
- Trugman wins international High Performance Computing Innovation Award
- Laboratory managers attend Criticality Safety Training
- 2019 Summer Physics Camp for young women of Northern New Mexico is a success
- Characterizing nuclear material out of regulatory control: Testing Los Alamos’ nuclear forensics capabilities
- Uranium migrates under conditions previously assumed to be immobilizing
- Using light to “listen” to electron scattering for the nascent field of valleytronics
- Integrating complex functional materials with additive manufacturing
- In-glovebox discrimination of uranium hydride/uranium oxide using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy
- The role of sequence data in global threat reduction
August 2019
- Dubey, Janecky, and Swift honored as AAAS Fellows
- Frigo and Monroe win Women in Technology awards
- 33 awardees recognized at the 2019 Student Symposium
- Kolman honored as NACE fellow
- Boosting biofuels and reducing plant waste—algae that does it all
- Using transition metal catalysis to generate high-pressure gas
- Cyber Fire School teaches students cybersecurity and data manipulation
- Improving prediction of radioactive gas seepage for nuclear testing treaty verification
- Drilling underway in Nevada for the Advanced Sources and Detectors Scorpius project
- “Deconstructed” capsules reveal essential details for inertial confinement fusion
- Machine learning trains neural nets to simulate molecular motion
- New high-performing, low-sensitivity explosive compounds
- An algorithm unravels the quantum-to-classical transition
- Progress in the physics of plasma mixing using VPIC
Sept. 2019
- Five LANL scientists elected 2019 APS Fellows
- Hunter and Mosby receive Presidential Early Career Awards
- Avers, Chien, Curole, and Kovach receive 2019 DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research Award
- Randolph receives 2019 Larry Foreman award for innovation and excellence in target fabrication
- Copper-weld breakthrough on the LANSCE accelerator
- Tackling the multifaceted impacts of increasing temperatures on forests
- First single-crystal structure determination of organometallic americium molecule
- Joint Science and Technology Institute comes to Albuquerque with help from LANL
- Proton Radiography Facility improvements boost safety, maximize experiment time
- New technique for understanding extreme lightning and changing climate
- Milestone launch for space-based nuclear detonation detection
- Evidence that electrons can help study materials under extreme conditions
- Resolving a long-standing debate on the hydrogen diffusion coefficient for α-uranium
- $3.25M awarded to LANL for quantum software and quantum algorithms
- Machine learning for scintillator design: learning to predict novel material performance
- NIFFTE measures angular anisotropy of U-235 with unprecedented precision
October 2019
- Carlsten awarded APS 2020 Robert R. Wilson Prize in particle accelerators
- Gollapinni receives DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Award
- Sarrao named to New Mexico Technology Research Collaborative board
- Azad appointed 2020 Fellow of The Optical Society
- Zapf, Zhu, and Ecke named American Physical Society outstanding referees
- New flow cytometry technique for engineering future algal biofuels
- Technical strides in colloidal quantum dots
- First polar organic functionality reduction mediated by vanadium catalysts
- Crossroads supercomputer on track to be most efficient in the world
- ‘Hackathon’ brings DOE labs together to solve CMIP data analysis challenge
- New prediction tools for flu forecasting
- Predicting safer explosives
- Material semi-coherent interfaces impact properties, both desirable and undesirable
- LANL team joins Arctic’s largest, longest research campaign
November 2019
- LANL staff receive Secretary of Energy Honor Awards
- Los Alamos breaks record for R&D 100 Award wins
- Marr-Lyon and team honored for counterterrorism and counterproliferation by NNSA
- LANSCE awarded DOE funding for dark matter search
- LANSCE operations streamlined by new adaptive feedback algorithm
- Genomics and disease: Unraveling the ties
- Improving nuclear detonation detection with transoceanic sensor systems
- New, most precise experimental limit on exotic electron–nucleon coupling
- Nuclear fuel progress: New simulation capability for noncollinear magnetic configurations in uranium dioxide
- From simulation to sight: The telescope that will spot a direct-collapse black hole
- Next-gen LDRD: COMIC aligns high-risk research with mission needs
December 2019
- Thomsen awarded two 2019 medals for space research
- Hollingsworth honored as AAAS Fellow
- Los Alamos researchers verify D-Wave optimization quality
- New topical antiseptic treats multidrug-resistant pathogens
- Patented process makes rocket fuel from renewable feedstocks
- Researchers achieve ignition of propellant with microwaves for first time
- Advances in monolayer semiconductors